The Bombay High Court on Saturday released the detailed bail order of actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan and the 2 others accused in the cruiseship drug case.
In its 14-page detailed order, the court said no evidence of a conspiracy was found between Aryan Khan, Arbaaz Merchant, and Munmun Dhamecha to commit drug-related offences. Nor was anything objectionable found in WhatsApp conversations between them, the court said.
Justice Nitin Sambre said that there is no material to infer that applicants hatched a conspiracy to commit an offence.
“For inferring the act of hatching conspiracy on the part of the Applicants and other co-accused, there has to be positive evidence about an agreement to do an unlawful act or to do lawful act by unlawful means and such agreement must precede with meeting of minds. Of course, such agreement can be express or implied or in parts. As far as the case in hand is concerned, the fact remains that Aryan Khan and Arbaaz Merchant were travelling together whereas Munmun Dhamecha had an independent travel plan which has no connection or relation with the travel of Aryan Khan and Arbaaz Merchant. After having gone through the WhatsApp chats extracted from Aryan Khan’s phone, nothing objectionable could be noticed to suggest that Khan and Merchant or all three applicants along with other accused persons in agreement have meeting of minds and have hatched conspiracy committing the offence in question,”
-the order said.
The Court said that merely because the accused were travelling on the cruise, cannot be a ground to invoke the offence of Section 29 against the accused. “There is hardly any positive evidence on record to convince this Court that all the accused persons with common intention agreed to commit unlawful act. Rather the investigation carried out till this date suggests that Aryan Khan and Arbaaz Merchant were travelling independent of Munmun Dhamecha and there was no meeting of minds on the aforesaid issue,” the bail order said.
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The NCB had arrested Aryan Khan, Munmun Dhamecha and Arbaaz Merchant on October 3 following a raid on October 2 at a cruise in Mumbai on secret information about an alleged party on the cruise which was set to leave for Goa from Mumbai. They were granted bail by the Bombay High Court on October 29.
In today’s order, the Court clarified that no drugs were found in Khan’s possession while the quantity recovered from Merchant and Dhamecha were not enough for charging them under the NDPS Act.
“So as to infer the case of conspiracy against the applicants also, there is absence of material on record of them having such meeting of minds with other accused who were named in the offence in question… The applicants were not even subjected to medical examination so as to determine whether at the relevant time, they had consumed drugs,”
-the order said.
Read full order below
233100036242021-4-1